Your nephew has my best wishes and prayers for everything he is going thru.
My FIL recently died from cancer that was supposed to have started in the pancreas...he had that whipple surgery, I think it's called. I'm almost positive they told him they couldn't remove all his pancreas because you can't live without it....??? He was taking some sort of enzymes to make up for not having his whole pancreas.

You can live without pancreas but it takes a fair amount of medication to substitute what's been taken out.
I know this for certain because I have a friend that had to have his pancreas removed. Yes, it made him diabetic, but the guy says that he's better off diabetic than having the pain he used to have.
Matter of fact, he wound up being featured on the Discovery Health channel.

Grgranny, I do hope that your nephew and other relatives are doing better. It seems it's been a tough row to hoe for you and I surely wish you better things.

Thank you all for your concern. We returned from the funeral last night. I recently learned he had hemochromotosis. If he had been diagnosed more than five years ago, it could have been stabilized. It became toxic to his body. It was so sad. He had been so active. He was a coach and in high school he was Nebr. state wrestling champion twice. His last employment was at Bullhead City, AZ. At least his mother didn't have to go through the pain of losing him as she is the one we lost 3 years ago from smoking.